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MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(EXODUS)
My Brother and I In A
Three-Some? – I Don’t Think So!
My Brother James came into the Seven-Eleven shortly after I
nearly assaulted a customer.
The
customer was a sphincter of a man, who was always rude in the
extreme. This day, he came in, gruffly slapped down exact
change, and asked for two packs of Marlboro cigarettes. Since
ninety-eight percent of people that smoke Marlboros like them in
hard packs, I handed him two hard packs.
His face twisted in contemptuous anger. He screamed and threw
the packs viciously on to the counter, bouncing into my stomach
and on to the floor. “I wanted soft packs Goddamn it!”
My
blood pressure rose so fast, so extreme that I thought my head
would explode like a ripe melon in the hot summer sun. At that
moment, I was in boot camp again and ready to attack my
opponent. My body was thrumming with the twin desires to maim
and kill along side with a distant voice in my head telling me
that the customer was always right.
I deftly grabbed two soft packs of Marlboros and I brought my
arm back like a professional baseball pitcher and I threw the
packs of cigarettes with as much force as I could muster into
the center of his chest.
As they hit his chest, I screamed at the top of my lungs,
“There’s your fucking soft packs mother fucker!!”
The
packs bounce off his chest with one pack each going into
separate directions across the store. His eyes were wide in
terror and disbelief that I had failed to acknowledge the
‘customer is always right’ protocol.
He scrambles quickly after his purchased cigarettes as I lean
half way over the counter with my entire body quaking, my
synapse screaming to murder this sphincter fuck. It took a
Herculean effort to hold myself back. The dark part of me
praying that he would attack me for what I had done to him;
instead he ran out, red-faced and in terror.
A co-worker, a local thug who loved to fight, was laughing,
“Man, I thought you were going to kill him!”
“God
damn it, I wish you would have”, he said with a look of familiar
lunacy in his eyes.
Just then my brother walked in.
He looked at me knowingly, “I bet you know why that last
customer ran out of here in a hurry.”
“I don’t want to talk about it”, I mumbled, knowing I needed to
normalize my blood pressure.
I introduced my brother to my thuggish co-worker. They smiled at
each other, mutually recognizing kindred spirits.
My brother had matured into an extraordinarily handsome guy. He
looked like a mixture of Patrick Swayze, Mathew McConaughey,
with the flavor of Italy running through his features.
He had grown about an inch taller than me, and his body was
almost a duplicate of mine, only not as burly. He was more
Tanzanian. His and my body had minor differences. My arms were
longer, my shoulders a bit broader, rib cage deeper. I was two
or three inches taller in the saddle than James.
However he had two or more inches of length in his thighs than I
had, (Our lower legs were exact), giving him that extra inch in
stature.
James also had bigger hands and wrists. He had a mane of curly
dirty blond hair and more of my father’s face. It was reputed in
the local grapevine that James had also inherited both our
father’s and grandfather’s legendary epic endowment. Some people
called him a home wreaker.
James had also grown to become enormously strong for his weight,
with coordination and agility couple with the inner fire that he
had inherited from our father. This had given him a reputation
as a street fighter that was not to be taken lightly. He had in
fact kicked the shit out of Miles and some other fearsome people
over drug deals gone badly.
James also took some of my attributes of life-style and took
them to levels way too extreme for me at the time. As I had
acquire one tattoo when I was in the Marines, and could never
decide on another. James liked my tattoo and eventually got
several -- not the convict types -- but nice ones. These seemed
to be placed strategically about his sinewy body. I wore a
pirate’s earring for a short while. He like that and got three
of them, one earring in one ear and two of them in his other.
James like my Honda motorcycles and even this he took to the
next level. He loved Nortons, Harleys, and Triumphs and he love
to make them into snapped out looking choppers.
James was always getting into motorcycle accidents and fights.
He was either finding himself in the hospital or putting someone
there. He was often involved on the wrong side of the law,
breaking into beverage centers in the middle of the night when
he and friends would get the whim to have some beer.
Other times his friends would pull knives on each other and on
him when a disagreement popped up during a drug deal gone bad.
James actually got into a fight with a big guy that he owed
money to for drugs that had been fronted to him. James was
terrified of the guy and was taking a beating, fighting the
entire time to get away and run, until the guy made the mistake
of kicking the side of James’s fancy car.
Just like my dad, James could tolerate a lot, but don’t mess
with his fine clothes, his car or bikes, or there would be hell
to pay. My brother commenced to kick the shit out of the thug.
In fact, James manhandled the guy so soundly, that he soon found
himself fighting for his life with the thug’s family. The thug’s
elderly mother was clinging to his back beating him with a
ball-peen hammer, cracking several of his ribs and the thug’s
younger brother doing his best to bite off my brother’s finger.
James use to hang out with the Warlocks, an outlaw motorcycle
gang until a drug deal went bad between them and him. He broke
in their clubhouse and stole thousand of dollars of stereo
equipment, guns, rifles, shotguns and a really nice old-time
World War II leather motorcycle jacket.
Yes my brother found himself mixed up with some rough people
with bad intentions.
James was a badass.
He was almost a cinematic reality of the sexy bad boy. In the
vanilla suburbs of King of Prussia, I was considered by many to
be a bad-boy. In the neighborhoods of Bridgeport, Conshohocken,
Swedeland, Swedsburg and other areas, I was treated with caution
by many of the toughs; but by comparison, James made me look
like Woody Allen riding around on a bicycle with training
wheels. He was glamorous.
However, as bad as he was, he still looked up to me, especially
when he got into trouble with people that he feared, (Which
happened to be all of the people he kicked the shit out of), he
would always try to enlist my help to go and kick someone’s ass;
just like when we were younger. He would offer to pay me money
to do his gorilla work for him. Even though he was tough, he
still felt that I was the bigger tougher brother.
It
must have been from all those years I had to pound the crap out
of him in self-defense, when he came at me with knifes, bats or
various garden implements.
It’s funny. The truth was, that if James and I were to get into
an all out fight…I would be in the fight of my life. He was much
tougher than he thought… most likely tougher than me.
James was a sexy badass.
Just ask many of the beautiful women that would throw themselves
at him. He was a sex magnet. When I was at my best looking, I
was able to attract my fair share of women, but when James
entered the room, it was invariably, “Vinny who?” I am
exaggerating of course, but not by that much.
Yes there were women that prefer me to James and vice versa.
There were many who for some inexplicable reason found the
thought of having a threesome with both my brother and me
extremely exciting. James and I could not count the times that a
woman would approach either him or I with the idea that we
should get together for a Menasha trio. The numbers
seemed legion. As perverse as this seemed to me, I would try to
seize an opportunity to have sex (Just one on one) with any of
the women that had approached James or me.
It was ironic, perverse and maddening that many of these women
could not be negotiated with to dally with either of us alone.
No, the deal was all of nothing. Of course, in my mind this was
not going to happen. I am not the kind of guy that likes another
man in bed with me; I don’t care how beautiful the woman is. I
don’t mind sharing, but not at the same time, and for God’s sake
not with my friggen brother!
James apparently was much more forgiving of socio-sexual norms.
As we were in the Seven-Eleven, one of his female flavors of the
month came into the store. She was a stunning sexpot that I had
seen around Bridgeport. She had a rep as a hot sex-pistol. We
knew each other by sight and rep. She starts to drape herself
all over my brother, her hands stroking and grabbing in areas
that normally are not traveled except in the privacy of one’s
room, (Or store cooler).
My brother had the look and attitude of a sultan that all of
this was his just desert.
She coos, “Hey Laz, you better talk to your brother. He’s gay
you know.”
James’s face flushes a bit and he shifts uncomfortably.
“Oh, I’m sorry. He does like to fuck women, and he is an great
lover, but he fucks around with guys too.”
“Any port in a storm, Jitterbug”, my dad’s voice whispers
in my mind.
James
was looking more uncomfortable, but I could tell that he was
trying to maintain a cool and aloof façade.
She bites his ear, grabs his crotch, as she looks me directly in
the eye and croons, “I got to get going lover. Be sure to come
by later.”
She looked at me again with what I could swear was a come hither
and I will do you also look. “See you around Laz, James has got
something to talk to you about.” And she left.
James and I met after I got off work at a pub called the
“Fiddler’s Green” a local Irish pub two doors down from the
Seven-Eleven. He seemed like he wanted to get something off his
chest.
He was struggled with the best words to approach me about
something as he sipped his beer.
Finally he said, “I want to talk to you about what Angie said.”
I thought I knew where he was going. I had heard many of the
rumors about my brother sexual proclivities from many
people…many of them mutual friends. I heard the rumors about him
and Karm, especially when they lived together. I heard about
many things that were witnessed or heard second hand.
Some
of these people are the most credible people I know. I had heard
assertions from some of my bisexual female friends with whom
James and I have had sex with on more than a few occasions.
I wanted to beat him to the punch, to save him humiliation, to
let him know that no matter what his sexual orientation was,
that I still loved him. I wanted to tell him that even though I
really didn’t understand why people traveled into those sexual
territories, he was still my brother, and I loved him. More
important, I had grown to like and respect him.
“James, I don’t really care about Angie saying that you’re gay.”
He flushed, “I don’t know where you heard that, he stuttered,
maybe because I lived with Karm, and he slams his beer down to
wash away embarrassment. He was clearly embarrassed that his big
brother had heard these rumors and he was clearly worried about
how I would think of him.
“Don’t worry, James, I don’t give a shit. It’s your business.”
Not agreeing with me, not confirming or denying any of it, James
moves away from that subject obliquely.
“I wanted to talk to you about what Angie wants to do with the
both of us”, he said.
“You don’t mean…?”
“Yes, he laughed, the usual.” “It’s crazy, isn’t it Laz?”
He was
referring to the bizarre phenomena of the numerous women that
wanted to have sex with both of us at the same time.
He said, “Not just her that wants to do it, but her friend Jodie
wants us both brother.”
“Well, I offered, Jodie is a hot little number. I have been
lusting for her for more than a few years. I must say that I
have had a thing for Angie for years also, you lucky bastard.”
James nodded, “Let me tell you Laz, Angie is hot and she’s hot
for you. But the deal is, she won’t have sex with you unless
it’s with the both of us at the same time.”
“So what do you care, you’re having sex with her regularly
right”, I asked?
James eyes glow with excitement, “Yeah I am, but her friend
Jodie wants to do the both of us, and she made it very clear
that it has to be either both of us at once or nothing.”
I was feeling queasy and frustrated, “Sorry James, you know how
I feel about this shit. I don’t mind trading off with you, but
honestly, the thought of you next to me, with any woman give me
the heebie geebies.”
James was frustrated at my reticence, “Hey Laz, any port in a
storm, Jitterbug. Come on, don’t be such a puss. You’re too
squeamish.”
“James, can’t you see that this is wrong? You’re my brother for
God sakes”
“Come on Laz, It’s not like you and I are going to have sex.”
“Honestly James, the thought of any guy’s naked body next to
mine, gay or not is a turn off for me.
“It ain’t going to happen. Just out of curiosity, why do you
think that we are getting approached by all of these women that
want to do us both? I mean it would make more sense, if these
women wanted to have sex with us regardless of a threesome or
not. It’s down right weird that many of them want the all or
nothing full meal deal. It’s downright sadistic.”
“Hell, I pondered, I don’t hear about any of our friends getting
these kind of offers.
James laughed and redoubled his arguments, “I don’t know big
brother. All the more reason to not look a gift horse in the
mouth and take advantage of the gifts that God bestows upon us.
Besides, what would our father think if he knew that we passed
up these opportunities?”
“Concerning this, I don’t give a fuck what he would think. I
ain’t doing it and that’s all I got to say.”
“Big brother,” he implored dramatically in a singsong tune.
“Forget it,” I said with finality!
Over the years since, I have had much time to think about this
incident, and other incidents like it. Besides my brother, I
have had two other male friends where the phenomena of certain
women wanting to have sex with both of us in an all or nothing
deal. One friend was Harry Babel, and the other I would not meet
until I moved to Oregon.
Both of these guys were hypersexual and lusty. Both were sexual
magnets to the female of the species. They had also experienced
the frustration of their loins wanting to have sex with women
that found them and me attractive.
Both
of them experienced some of these sexually desirable women
refusing to have sex with either of us, but instead promise us
out of this world sexual pleasure if either Harry and I, or my
other friend and I to have sex with them.
They also tried vigorously to convince me that it would be in
all of our best interest to go for the threesomes.
To the
best of my knowledge, neither of these guys is bi-sexual, or
deviant in anyway, or at least not too much.
I have only done the threesome thing a handful of times with
Harry, and while I was not so turned off enough that I was
unable to perform admirably; I must say, having him in the same
bed with me and the woman, put a major damper on what would have
otherwise been a mind-blowing experience.
Eventually, these few scenarios caused a bit of bad blood
between Harry and I because two of the women wanted a monogamous
relationship with me. A friend of mine who is a therapist claims
that men who really get off on the two men on one woman
threesomes are in reality trying to satiate homo-erotic
fantasies in a somewhat accept manner, that perhaps they are
even bi-sexual regardless if they know it or not.
I really am not sure about all that. In fact, I would imagine
that if true, it is probably true only some of the time. To me,
it does not matter what makes a person’s boat float, as long as
I and other people are not harmed or adversely affected.
At any rate, I have had to question many of my female friends
from the old neighborhood about this all or nothing deal. They
told me, it was because James and I had a major reputation as
being totally uninhibited sex hounds. We had a reputation for
being guys who could keep a secret (Me especially), and we had a
reputation for being inexhaustible lovers whose main goal was to
please the woman we were with, by almost any means possible.
According to my female friends, James and I had more experience
than most of the men in the neighborhood for guys our age, but
even compared to men that also had lots of experience, we were
different than many of the guys in our Italian-Irish Catholic
area that looked at women with an attitude of the Madonna-Whore
complex.
These women knew that regardless of how down and dirty, how
nasty they wanted sex to be, James and I would not denigrate
them. They knew that with us, it was all fun and games.
Also, unlike James and I, a lot of guys in the neighborhood who
had reps for being good lovers, were constrained to go to far
out of the norm because of their tight affiliations with their
family and friends in the community. Word of what people did
often got out and this put a damper on what a few of these guys
may have otherwise been tempted to do.
James and I did not have these constraints.
In addition, the attraction according to my friends was that
James and I did have a bit of the forbidden bad boy fruit about
us that drove a lot of parents to fits of apoplexy. That, many
of the women could not resist.
In my brothers case, years later, he tried to share with me, to
explain to me his sexual orientation, after it came out that he
had put a major sexual hit on a mutual friend. Before, he could
explain, or try to make it right with me, I saved him the
embarrassment and assured him that I had suspected for years and
I that I did not care as long as he was healthy and happy. I
told him what I told him that day in Fiddler’s Green,
that I loved him, liked him and respected him.
When I search back in my mind, back into the past, I toil with
the whys and what-for(s). Why did my brother become even a more
extreme sexual being than me, why was he so over the top in
everything he did. Why did he have the values he had. Why did he
at times feel the desire, perhaps even the necessity to have sex
with men? Was he trying to be just like our father, that any
port in a storm was the desired mantra of the day?
This
is not to imply that my dad is bi-sexual, he is not.
Instead what I am looking at is the machinations that have me
what I am, James what he was, and my sister what she is. Each of
us has suffered the affects of a broken home. Each of us have
especially suffered the affects of an absent uncaring father,
(or not caring in a way that is healthy and needed). Each of us
suffered the life of latchkey kids, depriving us of strong
parental influence.
While it is true that countless kids in the world grew up and
are growing up with home lives far worse, even unspeakably
horrifying, -- and because of this, I weep for them more than I
could ever weep for myself and my siblings; However, I am still
plagued by my pasts to better understand the whys and
what-for(s), to make sense of it all, to help other parents and
kids to understand how best to avoid pitfalls, particularly the
ones that are truly unnecessary.
In the book “Iron John”, the author has grabbed the horns
of this very same dilemma, which is the dynamics between parents
and children, and he delves more deeply into the dynamics of
father-son relationships.
In the presence of a father with strong personality that give
mixed signals of love and outright material and emotional
neglect, the children, particularly the sons are affected
deeply, profoundly. The author has noted that when this
occurs, the son(s) will often take one of the two most likely
strategies to deal with this schizophrenic situation in which
they have been thrust into.
For example, a son may choose to mimic, to become their father
entirely as in the case of my brother.
Another son may choose to be the antithesis of the father,
fighting to be a different personality entirely. That was my
course. At least that was the course I struggled to travel,
despite my genetic predispositions.
Yes, James had fought and struggled mightily to become just like
dear ole dad. He strove to become a party animal like our dad.
He worked hard to acquire the materials and luxuries that my dad
felt was so important to have in life as a measure of one’s
worth.
Along with his strong genetic leanings of hyper-sexuality, he
became the lusty womanizer that my dad was.
He
studiously copied my dad’s bad boy persona, putting lots of
emphasis on his clothes, vehicles, and jewelry.
He
copied my dads gestures, body language, facial expressions, and
even parroted all of my dad’s pet sayings and cliques.
To my dad’s credit, he is not just a bundle of bad examples; my
brother had many good qualities to copy also. Like my dad, James
developed a strong work ethic. He, like my dad was the model of
responsible, and ambitious employee. My dad is in many ways
hyper-intelligent with strong mathematic and mechanical skills;
James picked those up from my dad.
Also like my dad, James loved to tell stories, entertain people,
and was very generous with people he choice to hang out with.
With regards to my brothers sexual proclivities that my father
does not share; I think that James picked that up from earlier
imprinting. People can say what they will about being born gay
as if it is determined by the stars or a past life or what have
you; they can talk about genetic propensity, or even how
friendly or hostile the womb of one’s mother was. My opinion?
I tend to lean towards the school of thought that physical and
emotional environment plays as heavily in the equation as the
other stuff, if not more. I also believe that what we think and
do, -- that is, our internal dialogue and how we consciously
carry out our actions in the world may very well have the most
to do with what we become. Cause and effect.
From what I can piece together from my brother, our friends and
family, I think James’s early sexual imprinting along with the
pain of missing a strong fraternal presence was the key to these
sexual proclivities.
I
remember James telling me that he ‘caught’ that kid “Pat”, (The
kid that wanted me to touch his woody) and a friend of James’s,
named Jimmy, sucking each other off. He told me he caught
them several times. I had the distinct impression that he went
out of his way to catch them in the act, just like he like to
try and catch me masturbating. I am not sure, but I always had
the sneaking suspicion that James and Jimmy would often get
together to do more that simply play with their toy soldiers.
Years later, when James moved in with Karm , and even before, --
Karm was an adult male who paid a lot of attention to James. He
would always be there to hear of his angst. Karm showed James
that he was interested in him and that he cared about him. Since
Karm was bi-sexual, (Something that my parents and I did not
know till years later), and because Karm was the kind of man
that would put the hit on other men or women if he could,
particularly if he was high.
I think he introduced and imprinted this behavior to James. Karm
was after all a surrogate father figure.
Looking back, Karm perhaps was a pedophile, at least with
teenage boys, he certainly was bisexual that lean more towards
men than women.
I suppose he followed my fathers creed of “Any port in a storm”
also.
At any rate, my brother’s closest friends, my mother and I did
not realize the extent of his involvement with Karm with regards
to drugs and other aberrant behavior. I believe that my
brother’s formative years were a source of the deep depression
that he habitually suffered from.
I
believe it was this and his anxieties that caused him to
medicate himself with drugs, alcohol and sex.
I believed that it’s what caused him to involve himself in a
wide range of risky behaviors and activities. It is the reason
that he and Don would sometimes play a variation of Russian
Roulette, the variation where a person points the revolver at
you and pulls the trigger, and each takes turns spinning the
cylinder, pointing the gun and the other and pulling the
trigger.
All of
these things tormented my brother for years.
Why didn’t I suffer the same problems with substance abuse or
aberrant behavior? Simple. I am a different person, with my own
unique battles with dependencies and aberrant behaviors. As I
said,
I struggled hard, despite my genetic leanings to choose a
different path than my father and brother. Though I am not
bisexual, nor have I had the same problems with drugs as James,
I have had my own demons. I still have a one or two left. I have
struggled mightily to be the opposite of my dad…and much of the
time I have failed miserably.
The author of Iron John addresses many of these issues
and he talks about the other son, the one who tries to break
away cleanly. I think in some cases it is best to find a middle
ground. One day I hope to reach this goal.
HOMEPAGE
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